The study was carried out to determine the
effect of salt on the sensory, nutritive and keeping quality of OFSP crisps.
Crisps were made by deep frying slices of approximately 3.5 mm thickness
treated with, 2% and 4% table salt. A control with no salt treatment was
prepared alongside the treated ones. Two varieties of OFSP; Ejumula and
Kakamega were used in the study. After deep frying, the crisps were cooled to
room temperature, packed in paper-lined high density polythene pouches and
stored in a dark cupboard at room temperature for three months. During the
storage period, the crisps were analyzed for proteins, fat and carotenoid
content. Changes in sensory attributes were analyzed using a semi-trained
panel. Results indicated that freshly prepared crisps treated with 2% salt had
the highest acceptability mean scores for all attributes while there was no
significant difference (p > 0.05) between crisps made from either Ejumula or
Kakamega variety. Carotenoid content decreased with increase in salt
concentration in both OFSP varieties. Shelf-life studies showed that the
decline in sensory attributes started after 2 months of storage. The study
shows that OFSP crisps treated with 2% salt are more acceptable and reasonably
stable during storage.

The above is the brief,and you can read the
full
article for more details.

2013年4月25日星期四

Do you often tease mother or father when
you are a child?I think most people may tell me :It is mother. It is very
common in our life.

A
research made by Nerea Portu-Zapirain explores representational models in a sample
of 111 children aged between 3 and 6.Finally confirm that security in the
representation of attachment is higher with mothers worldwide.

Why?I think it is may be when we are a
child,mother takes care of us more.There has been a research indicated that the
baby's conscious and memory starting around 5 months after birth.So at the age
of 6 month’s old,the baby may have a certain sense.

Besides, “The older the child, the greater
the security manifested in their relations, and the younger the child, the
greater the insecurity. ” Nerea Portu-Zapirain wrote in his paper.

2013年4月24日星期三

In order to discourage teen rebellion，Barack Obama
has warned his daughters that if they get tattoos, he and his wife will get
matching ones on the same place on their bodies.As US President，Obama also
have to consider education of children.

Indeed,children's education is of great importance
for parents, especially the problem children.When we found our children deviating
from the right orbit,we are anxious.For some parents,they are helplessness. Not
everyone is Obama.Some parents don’t know how to effectively prevent children
do the wrong thing,and how to deal with their “problem child”.

There
is an article introduces a method or makes a research on this common
phenomenon.I hope it can be helpful for parents and the researchers in this
field.More and more better researches are excepted .

2013年4月23日星期二

Background: Eye-tracking has been used to investigate social perception in
autism spectrum disorder (ASD) with variable results. This heterogeneity may be
due to the types of stimuli used. In this study, we investigated whether the
use of moving vs static stimuli or human actors vs cartoons characters would be
more sensitive in detecting gaze abnormalities and discriminating children with
ASD from typically developing children.

Methods: We studied 18 children with ASD (mean age = 12.9 ± 2.9) and 21
typically developing controls (mean age = 11.3 ± 2.5). Gazes were tracked using
Tobii-T120 eye-tracker. Four different types of stimuli were presented: movie
with human actors, cartoon movie, picture with human actors and cartoon
picture. To identify the type of stimuli that best discriminate the ASD group
from the control group, a two-way ANOVA was performed using ecological
dimension [human-actors/cartoon] and presentation form [movie/picture] as
factors.

Results: Children with ASD presented significantly less fixations to eyes
and faces in the movie with human actors and in the picture with human actors.
Children with ASD also presented significantly more fixations to non-social
backgrounds in the movie with human actors and in the cartoon movie. A
significant ecological effect was observed for the reduction in fixations to
the eyes [human-actors > cartoon]. A significant presentation form effect
was observed for the increased fixations to the non-social background [movie
> picture].

Conclusions: The direct comparison of gaze behavior across four different types
of stimuli demonstrates that gaze abnormalities in ASD depend on the type of
stimuli that is used. Our results suggest that general gaze abnormalities in
children with ASD are better detected when using dynamic stimuli, and finer
details of these abnormalities, especially looking less to the eyes, are better
detected in a more ecologically relevant situation presenting human characters.

In this study, the protein quality
evaluation of these animal food sources, highly produced and consumed in
Sonora, is proposed, using in-vitro methodologies. Four different species, from
each aquatic and terrestrial origin, were selected. Samples of lean muscle were
used in all cases. Various in-vitro methodologies for protein quality
evaluation were selected, alternatives to the animal bioassays: % digestibility,
Total amino acid analyses (HPLC), PDCAAS, computerized PER calculations (C-PER
and DC-PER) and total collagen contents. % in-vitro digestibility presented
significant differences among samples from terrestrial species, but muscle from
aquatic species did not showed significant differences. All sources of
proteins, both aquatic and terrestrial proved to be rich sources of essential
amino acids. PDCAAS was unable to establish significant differences in protein
quality among sources of protein from different origin. Both methods C-PER and
DC-PER were more exact in their results and were able to detect significant
differences among samples of different origin. An important finding was the
great difference in the total collagen content between aquatic and terrestrial
sources of proteins, where terrestrial muscle proteins had almost 10-time more
collagen than aquatic protein sources. However, these collagen contents did not
seem to have a significant influence in the protein quality of these animal proteins.
These muscle proteins, from both aquatic and terrestrial species, confirmed to
have a high protein quality and some of the in-vitro methodologies used in this
study represent a valuable alternative to the animal bioassays.

2013年4月21日星期日

Recent discoveries show steady improvements
in life expectancy during modern decades.Yes,better food supply and nutrition, better
hygiene,the popularization of health knowledge does make me enjoy a longer
life.According to Wikipedia,a French has ever lived for 122 years,a Japanese is
116 years old so far still alive.Will human continue to live longer in future?A
research named <
Predicting human lifespan limits>published in Nature Science takes industrialized
countries as an example,and analyses the limits that will affect our “longevity”.You
can read this
research for more detail.

2013年4月18日星期四

Compared
with cars,bike seems to have some advantages that cars can’t instead.Such as:
environmental protection, save money , no traffic jams and good for
health.Thus,some people prefers bikes.But there lies a big problem for riders:
safety.A research from Scientific Research Publishing analyses 5 years of
bicycle crash data from the city of San Francisco and make recommendations on
how planners and design professionals can keep bicyclist safety considerations
in mind.You can learn more by reading the full article.

Ricin is one of the most poisonous
substances on Earth, it's scarily easy to make, and somebody is mailing it to
the President and at least one U.S. senator. What it is, how it works?

How
poisonous is it?

Oh, man. Very. It's dangerous in just about
any way it gets into your system, though ingesting (eating) it is about the
least dangerous way. Injecting or inhaling requires about a thousand times less
ricin to kill a human than ingesting, and that's a very small amount indeed. An
average adult needs only 1.78mg of ricin injected or inhaled to die; that's
about the size of a few grains of table salt--which ricin resembles visually.

How
does it work?

Ricin, a toxic protein, infects cells,
blocking their ability to synthesize their own protein. Without cells making
protein, key functions in the body shut down; even in survivors, permanent
organ damage is often the result of ricin poisoning. It's a highly unpleasant
way to be poisoned: within six hours, according to the Center for Disease
Control, victims who have ingested ricin will feel gastrointestinal effects
like severe vomiting and diarrhea, which can lead to serious dehydration. Then
the ricin infects the cells of the vital gastrointestinal organs as they pass
through the body, leading to the failure of the kidneys, liver, and pancreas.

Inhalation of ricin has a different effect,
since the ricin proteins aren't interacting with the same parts of the body.
Instead of gastrointestinal problems, you'll develop a vicious, bloody cough,
your lungs will fill with fluid, and eventually you'll lose your ability to
breathe, causing death. Injection, too, is different, depending on where you've
been injected, but will generally result in vomiting and flu-like symptoms,
swelling around the place of injection, and eventually organ failure as your
circulatory system passes the protein around the body. Death from inhalation or
injection usually occurs about three to five miserable, agonizing days after
contact.

Interestingly, there aren't any immediate
symptoms, and indeed there can be a significant delay before symptoms show
themselves, up to a day or two.

Exposure on the skin is generally not
fatal, though it may cause a reaction that can range from irritation to
blistering.

How
does it stack up against other poisons?

Well, that depends on what your aim is.
Ricin is much easier to produce than other popular biological weapons like
botulinum, sarin, and anthrax, but it is not as potent as any of those, which
limits its effectiveness as a weapon. It also is not very long-lived; the
protein can age and become inactive fairly quickly compared to, say, anthrax,
which can remain dangerous for decades. There were experiments back around
World War I attempting to make wide-scale ricin weapons, packaging it into
bombs and coating bullets in it, but these proved not particularly effective
and also violate the Hague Convention's agreements on war crimes, so the US
discarded ricin.

It's much more effective, weapon-wise, as a
close-contact, small-target weapon--by injecting, as with Georgi Markov, or by
putting small particles into an aerosol spray and blasting a target. It's also
not contagious, which limits its effectiveness as a tool of biological warfare.
But it's considered highly dangerous partly because it's still outrageously
toxic and partly because it takes no great skill to produce.

So
it's not hard to make?

Well...no. Like, not at all. It's made from
the byproduct of the castor oil manufacturing process. You take the
"mash" of the castor oil seeds, which contain around 5-10 percent
ricin, and perform a process called chromatography. Chromatography is a blanket
term for a set of techniques used to separate mixtures, usually by dissolving
in liquid or gas. The US government has done its best to eradicate recipes for
ricin from the internet, sort of; a patent was filed back in 1962 for ricin
extraction, and the Patent Office took it off the publicly available server in 2004
for safety reasons. That said, the recipe is super easy to find; here at the
PopSci offices, I'm blocked from listening to Rdio on my work computer, but I
found a recipe to make an outrageously deadly poison in about a minute.

The techniques involved are
undergraduate-level chemistry, creating a slurry with the castor bean mash and
filtering with water and then a few easily-found substances like hydrochloric
acid.

It
comes from castor beans?

Ricin is a highly toxic protein that's
extracted from the seed of the castor plant, often called a "castor
bean" or "castor oil bean," despite not technically being a
bean. The castor plant is extremely common; it's used as an ornamental plant
throughout the western world, prized for its ability to grow basically anywhere
as well as its pretty, spiky leaves and weird spiny fruits. It's also an
important crop; the seeds are full of oil, and castor oil is used for lots of
legitimate purposes. It's a common laxative, for one thing, and since it's more
resistant to high temperatures than other kinds of vegetable oils, it's a nice
alternative to petroleum oil in engines.

Wait,
but you can eat it? So how is this a poison?

Ah, yes. Castor oil is perfectly safe,
according to the FDA and your grandma, but ricin is not castor oil. Castor
seeds are still poisonous; a study says that a lethal dose of castor seeds for
adults is about four to eight seeds. But the oil itself does not contain ricin;
the ricin protein is left behind in the "castor bean mash" after the
oil is extracted from the seed. Poisoning from eating the seed itself is rare.

Have
there been cases of ricin poisoning in the past?

You mean, beyond the several times it's
been featured as a major plot point in Breaking Bad? Sure! The most famous is
probably the assassination of Georgi Markov in 1978. Markov was a Bulgarian
novelist, playwright, journalist, and dissident, and was murdered by the
Bulgarian secret service, with assistance from the KGB, by ricin injection. He
was crossing a bridge when he was jabbed in the leg with an umbrella, which
delivered a ricin pellet into his bloodstream. He died three days later of
ricin poisoning.

There are plenty of incidents of people
arrested for attempting (or, more often, succeeding) to make ricin; it's a
pretty easy poison to make. In fact, there was even another
ricin-in-the-envelope attempt made back in 2003--a person identifying as
"Fallen Angel" sent letters filled with ricin to the White House,
apparently as a result of some new trucking regulations (seriously). "Fallen
Angel" was never found, but the letters were intercepted and did not cause
any injury.

How
dangerous are these envelopes filled with ricin?

The envelope strategy has more to do with
potential ease of getting the poison close to targets than its strength as a
delivery system. If you're targeting the President of the United States, it's
easier and more anonymous to mail a letter than to try to get close to him with
an umbrella modified for ricin-stabbing. But it's not a great way to poison
someone with ricin. Assuming the letter actually got into the target's hands,
of the three ways ricin can get into a person's system (inhalation, injection,
ingestion), only one--inhalation--is really possible, and it's not that likely.

Inhalation as a weapon is best accomplished
through a mist, ideally delivered through an aerosol. But that's not possible
in a letter full of powder. It's possible that small granules of ricin could be
released into the air and inhaled when handling the letter, but it is not an
effective way to poison someone. And whoever's sending these letters evidently
doesn't know that the government set up an elaborate mail-screening system
after the 2001 Anthrax scare.

2013年4月17日星期三

Tree
forests cover approximately 9.4 percent of the Earth's surface (or 30 percent
of total land area), though they once covered much more (about 50 percent of
total land area). They function as habitats for organisms, hydrologic flow
modulators, and soil conservers, constituting one of the most important aspects
of the biosphere.But it has been significantly harmed by human for all
purposes.What the future forests will be like? Researchers from Forest
Ressearch Institute of Zvolen made a guess in the paper
published in American Journal of Plant Sciences:

In
this paper, we briefly summarize the problems that have been affecting
Slovakian forestry in the past, in the present and are expected in the future.
In the past, the forests in Central Europe were significantly harmed by the
development of mining, metallurgy, wood processing industry, agriculture and
grazing of sheep and cattle. Many areas have been completely deforested.
Fundamental change occurred in the 18th Century, when the regulations about
forest management, declared by Empress of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy Maria
Therese, came into force. With the changing level of forest cover, there have
been changing as well the problems in the forestry. Forests in Slovakia are
nowadays dealing with the climate change, which is causing extreme weather fluctuations.
It is connected with the emergence of abiotic disturbances after which usually
occurs activation of biotic harmful agents. We expect that the most serious
problem of forests in the future will be their state of health. We expect an
increase representation of thermophilic tree species (beech and oak) at the
expense of upland trees such as spruce. An important role will be played by the
invasive species of plants, fungi and animals that can compete with native
species and their habitats or in the situation of the absence of their
reducents these can cause serious economic and environmental damage.

2013年4月16日星期二

On
15 April afternoon ,US time,an explosion attacks Boston marathon.It is the
largest terrorist attack after 911 in USA.This
terrorist event occurs around 3 PM, local time,one hour before New York stock
market close.

Affected
by this, Europe and America financial market are hard hitted. U.S. stocks
closed sharply lower on Monday, 3 major indexes fell more than 1.7%. The VIX
index sharply rose 40%. Commodities such as gold and silver are bear raid. Gold
prices steep falls 9.3% on Monday,which is the one-day drop in 30 years.

The
United States as the world’s only economic, political and military superpower,
U.S. stocks’s cold must cause turmoil in the world. Asian stock markets fell in
early trading on the 16th. The 2 cities of Shanghai and Shenzhen in
China are both low on April 17, 2013. The intraday market rebound, the two
markets both meteoric rise, At the close, the stock index reported 2194.85
points, up 0.59%, Shenzhen Component Index closed at 8852.42 points, up 1.36%.

“9.11” terrorist attack has ever
destroyed the economy all over the world

“9.11”
terrorist attack is undoubtedly the biggest terrorist attack which affects
global economy. It made the US stock market stopped 4 days which has never
happened before. US President Barack Obama has ever said in the 9.11 memorial
concert:” More than a decade ago, the United States has experienced the darkest
day in the history.”

Stock
market is a barometer of a country's national economy.9.11 terrorist attacks
not only caused a huge blow to America's economy, it also caused serious
influence on the rest of the world economy. Spooked investors Sell all kinds of
stock, fear that there is so much pain in global stock markets.In fact, after
9.11 events, fall of stock markets in Europe, Japan, and South America is more
larger than Wall Street stock market.

The
United Nations has issued a report says:”3.11 terrorist attacks will make this
year's world economic growth rate reduced by one percent,with a loss of $350 billion.”

Boston
police say no suspect has been taken into custody in connection with the
explosions near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, despite reports from
the New York Post of a 20-year-old suspect under guard at an undisclosed Boston
hospital.

Police
Commissioner Edward Davis also says the fire at a library a few kilometres away
and more than an hour later doesn’t appear to be related to the explosions at
the race on Monday. He says the fire may have been caused by an incendiary
device.

A
searchable list of Canadians in the race is at the bottom of this story.

Police
say it’s too early to get into specifics about the nature of devices or whether
shrapnel was involved.

Bloody
spectators near the finish line of the Boston Marathon were being carried to the
medical tent that had been set up to care for fatigued runners. Police wove
through competitors as they ran back toward the course. Many of the injured
suffered devastating injuries.

“These
runners just finished and they don’t have legs now,” Roupen Bastajian, 35, a
Rhode Island state trooper and former Marine,
told the New York Times. “So many of them. There are so many people without
legs. It’s all blood. There’s blood everywhere. You got bones, fragments. It’s
disgusting.”

“There
are a lot of people down,” said one man, whose bib No. 17528 identified him as
Frank Deruyter of North Carolina.

He
was not injured, but marathon workers were carrying one woman, who did not
appear to be a runner, to the medical area as blood gushed from her leg. A
Boston police officer was wheeled from the course with a leg injury that was
bleeding.

An
image of a fireball and smoke were shared on Twitter as well as what appears to
be blood on the ground at the site of the reported explosion.

“There
are people who are really, really bloody,” said Laura McLean, a runner from
Toronto, who was in the medical tent being treated for dehydration when she was
pulled out to make room for victims of the explosions. “They were pulling them
into the medical tent.”

2013年4月15日星期一

3
weeks without food,what will happen to your body?A research published in Food and
Nutrition Sciences
made a starvation trial to explore the changes of biochemical composition and
the fatty acid dynamics in the triacylglycerol fraction of the digestive gland,
gonads and adductor muscle of the scallop Flexopecten glaber.The following it
the general ideas:

Results
show that three weeks of food deprivation induce depletion of carbohydrates and
a significant decrease in proteins and lipids. The noteworthy patterns recorded
for the various classes of lipids were the increase of the amount of
phosphatidylethanolamine against a strong decline of mono-diacylglycerols,
triacylglycerol and phosphatidylserine classes in gonads. These results reflect
the ability of Flexopecten glaber to remodel endogenous lipid classes in order
to avoid the gonads deterioration. In the starved specimens, severe declines of
the n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid group were recorded in the triacylglycerol
fraction of digestive gland and adductor muscle against the increase of this
group in gonads. These results confirm the role of triacylglycerol as a
polyunsaturated fatty acids reservoir and pointed out to their mobilization
from storage organs to the developing gonads during the food shortage trial.
Examination of fatty acid data revealed that food deprivation lead Flexopecten
glaber to invest in saving and accumulation of highly unsaturated fatty acids
in go- nads. This applies mainly to the arachidonic acid (20:4n-6) and the
docosahexaenoic acid (22:6n-3).

2013年4月14日星期日

Today I read an article,it
mainly introduce a new Touch-Sensitive Switch which use nonlinear electrical resonator.The
following is the general:

We introduce a novel switching mechanism
that relies on the bistability of a simple nonlinear electrical resonator which
incorporates a varactor diode as its capacitive element. The switching action
can be made fast and is self-contained in that no further circuitry is
necessary. Unlike a flip-flop, whose state is flipped by applying a TTL pulse,
this nonlinear switch can be engaged external to the circuit via magnetic,
inductive or capacitive coupling; in this way, the switch becomes intrinsically
touch-sensitive. Alternatively, the switching action can also be accomplished
using frequency-shift-keying (FSK) modulation, which holds the promise of fast
manipulation of the memory state. We demonstrate the potential application of
these ideas by constructing a touch-sensitive LED lattice.

I have a doubt that is this kind of Touch-Sensitive
Switch has any advantages over the present ones?

2013年4月11日星期四

It was already known that being
"apple-shaped", as opposed to "pear-shaped", added to the
risk of developing cardiovascular problems.

This research, in the Journal of the
American Society of Nephrology, found signs of kidney problems in even
otherwise healthy apple-shaped people.

UK experts said people needed to take more
care of their kidney health.

The research, by a team at the University
Medical Center Groningen, in the Netherlands, looked at more than 300 people
who had either a healthy bodyweight. or who were overweight.

They found that having a higher
waist-to-hip ratio - seen in those who were more apple-shaped - was associated
with lower kidney function, reduced kidney blood flow and higher blood pressure
in the kidneys.

This was the case even in those who were
otherwise healthy.

'Growing
problem'

Arjan Kwakernaak, who led the study, said:
"We found that apple-shaped persons - even if totally healthy and with a
normal blood pressure - have an elevated blood pressure in their kidneys.

"When they are also overweight or
obese, this is even worse."

The findings suggest that these individuals
may benefit from treatments that reduce kidney blood pressure - such as cutting
salt levels and targeted drug treatments.

He added: "This is further evidence
that there is a link between obesity and the growing problem of kidney disease,
and that more needs to be done to make people aware of the importance of protecting
kidney function."

2013年4月10日星期三

If it were really possible to build a warp
drive, using it wouldn’t make you fly back into your seat as in a
science-fiction movie. “Inside the spaceship, it would feel absolutely normal,”
says physicist Dave Goldberg of Drexel University. “You would be weightless, of
course, because you wouldn’t have any acceleration on you at all.”

That assumes you’re on the inside of what’s
known as an Alcubierre Bubble—a hypothetical construct that could allow a patch
of space to travel at many times the speed of light. The crew of a spaceship
that had entered such a bubble probably wouldn’t have any sense of traveling at
warp speed—“once you’re in there, it’s the most blasé thing in the world,” says
Goldberg—but crossing the bubble’s border would be gut-wrenching. It could be
as violent as
falling into a black hole: The space-time deformation at the edge of the
bubble would create an enormous tidal effect, one strong enough to rip your
bones apart.

2013年4月9日星期二

We yawn when we are sleepy and wake up.Why
we yawn?Have you ever thought it is a sign of sleepy or wakefulness? Dmitry
Arbuck，Meridian Health GroupIndianapolis，made a research for
this interesting phenomenon.You can read the research paper for more details.

Infectivity
and social contact

Contagious is the most prominent characteristics
of yawn.Yawn is too easy to infection. Nearly everything related to it could
inspire more yawning,including see ,hear,read or even think of yawn.Some people
has found that silent film which shows yawn can infect nearly 55％ audience in
5 minutes,even those people who didn’t yawn ,has admitted that they at least
being tempted.

There is some thing more interesting: If we
remove the yawning mouth from the video,it can also arouse the audience to yawn. Although a suddenly open mouth is the most
significant part of the yawn. And, in turn, the yawn caused by yawning mouth
alone is not as much as smiley face.Maybe it is because the open mouth is not
only stand for yawning,but also singing or crying.It is the while face which
makes us yawn,including the eyes narrowed.

Spontaneous yawning is very old from the evolutionary point of view- most
vertebrates have this behavior. While contagious yawning has a shorter history,it
only appears in social mammals.Such as chimpanzee,maybe dog is included.

For human,we spontaneous yawn when we are
still in the womb,but contagious yawning appears at the age of four or five.In
this age,child can owe mental state to
itself or others.This further proves that the contagious yawning has something
to do with social contact.

(source:SCIRP,guokr) Digression:When I completeed this artical,I have yawned heaps of times.

2013年4月8日星期一

It is not easy to handed several friends
who never need to say thanks. Maybe it is very easy to say”thanks” to your
friends,but it is a rare state that you really needn’t to say thanks to each
other.A true frirnd never say “thanks ”,but their affection and friendship won’t
be inferior for lack of “thanks”, to the contrary, it will be more precious.

Friends like this is hard to handed.But
which friends have the potential to develop into this kind of friends?

Ryo Okada sheds light on this problem from
the psychology perspective.He studies 262 Japanese university students,and
concluded that “self-determined friendship motivation predicted lower levels of
anger, hostility, and physical aggression and that hostility and anger
predicted lower levels of self-esteem. Verbal aggression was found to be
positively associated with self-determined friendship motivation and
self-esteem.”

2013年4月7日星期日

A study in the journal Nature Medicine
showed that carnitine in red meat was broken down by bacteria in the gut.

This kicked off a chain of events which
resulted in higher levels of cholesterol and an increased risk of heart
disease.

Dieticians warned there may be a risk to
people taking carnitine supplements.

There has been a wealth of studies
suggesting that regularly eating red meat may be damaging to health.

In the UK, the government recommends eating
no more than 70g of red or processed meat a day - the equivalent of two slices
of bacon.

Saturated fat and the way processed meat is
preserved are thought to contribute to heart problems. However, this was not
thought to be the whole story.

Continue reading the main story

“

Gut
bugs

Experiments on mice and people showed that
bacteria in the gut could eat carnitine.

Carnitine was broken down into a gas, which
was converted in the liver to a chemical called TMAO.

In the study, TMAO was strongly linked with
the build-up of fatty deposits in blood vessels, which can lead to heart
disease and death.

Dr Hazen, from the Cleveland Clinic, said
TMAO was often ignored: "It may be a waste product but it is significantly
influencing cholesterol metabolism and the net effect leads to an accumulation
of cholesterol.

"The findings support the idea that
less red meat is better.

"I used to have red meat five days out
of seven, now I have cut it way back to less than once every two weeks or
so."

He said the findings raised the idea of
using a probiotic yogurt to change the balance of bacteria in the gut.

Reducing the number of bacteria that feed
on carnitine would in theory reduce the health risks of red meat.

Vegetarians naturally have fewer bacteria
that are able to break down carnitine than meat-eaters.

Yoghurt is rich in potassium, calcium,
protein and B vitamins, including B-12. The benefits if it is known to all: promotes
good digestion, boosts immune function,lowers cholesterol, aids weight loss, builds
strong bones, builds lactose tolerance, treats yeast infections, soothes sunburns,
freshens breath.So probiotic chocolate emerged
in 2009.Is it really a good choice for consumers who love chocolates so
much ?How does the quality?A study states that the addition(%) of yoghurt powder
says.

“Rheological studies showed that milk
chocolate prepared using yoghurt powder at 50% showed no significant changes in
yield value compared to that of control, but at 100% addition a considerable
decrease in yield value was observed. Microstructural properties of chocolate
with 50% addition of yoghurt powder showed smaller particles adhering to the
cocoa and sugar crystals but at 100% addition of yoghurt powder, the cocoa
particles were completely covered by smaller yoghurt powder matrix. ”

In the end ,the research concluded that:
milk chocolate with probiotic yoghurt powder was prepared without affecting the
desirable quality of conventional chocolate.

2013年4月3日星期三

Three automobile engineers from Chennai
have come out with what they claim can check sexual offences in India â€” lingerie
with GPS capable of sending alerts to the woman's parents and police.

"The lingerie with global positioning
system (GPS), global system for mobile communications (GSM) and also pressure
sensors, is capable of sending shock waves of 3,800 kV as well as alerts to
parents and police," says Manisha Mohan, co-developer of the innovative
product named Society Harnessing Equipment (SHE).However,this anti-rape lingerie is questioned:

A netizen from jiandan says:May be when the parents or police arrives as soon as they get the signal,the girl has been reped.

Another
netizen from timesofindia says: How much current it requires for the
battery to produce shock waves of 3,800 kV and send gps and gsm signals.He also
ridicules that: If it sends shock after getting pressure by touching her then
she will also get the shock and what about if she forget to remove this lingere
infront of her husband. Police and her parents will see all the seen of
bedroom.

There are also some people worry about the
price.” poor women cannot afford this expensive GPS fitted lingeries”

2013年4月2日星期二

Substantial quantities of the radioisotope
iodine-131 were produced by the meltdowns, then wafted over the Pacific Ocean
and fell over Hawaii, the American West Coast, and other Pacific countries in
rain and snow, reaching levels hundreds of times greater than those consideredsafe.

In fact,there is alson data shows that its impact to US West
Coast from Fukushima is likely larger than anticipated.

"Fukushima fallout appeared to affect all
areas of the U.S., and was especially large in some, mostly in the western part
of the nation,"wrote researchers with the Radiation and Public Health Project
in Open Journal of Pediatrics(peer-reviewed paper).They also offer correlation data of 2011 and 2012,and state that “The
number of congenital hypothyroid(treatable when detected early) cases in these
five states from March 17-December 31, 2011 was 16% greater than for the same
period in 2010, compared to a 3% decline in 36 other US States (p < 0.03).”

The findings may be only a tip of an
epidemiological iceberg.

“Congenital hypothyroidism can be used as one measure to assess any
potential changes in U.S. fetal and infant health status after Fukushima
because official data was available relatively promptly,” the researchers
wrote. “However, health departments will soon have available for other 2010 and
2011 indicators of fetal/infant health, including fetal deaths, premature
births, low weight births, neonatal deaths, infant deaths, and birth defects.”

2013年4月1日星期一

Tay-Sachs is a rare autosomal recessive
genetic disorder. Research in the late 20th century demonstrated that Tay–Sachs
disease is caused by a genetic mutation in the HEXA gene on (human) chromosome
15.

In 1887, American neurologist Bernard Sachs
of Mount Sinai Hospital, New York ,noted an increased disease prevalence in the
Eastern European Ashkenazi Jewish population.

Tay-Sachs, an inherited neurological
disorder, is unusually common among French Canadians from eastern Quebec. Two
alleles are responsible, one being specific to the north shore of the St.
Lawrence and the other to the south shore. This pattern of convergent evolution
suggests the presence of a selection pressure limited to eastern Quebec. Both
alleles probably arose after the British conquest of Quebec in 1759 or at least
were uncommon previously. To explain the high incidence of Tay-Sachs among
Ashkenazi Jews, some authors have invoked heterozygote advantage, i.e.,
heterozygous individuals enjoy a higher rate of neuronal growth, and thus
greater learning capacity, without the neurological deterioration of homozygous
individuals. Such an advantage would have helped Ashkenazim perform the mental
effort required for work in trade and crafts. A similar situation may have
developed in eastern Quebec, where the relative scarcity of British and
American merchants made it easier for French Canadians to enter occupations
that required literacy, numeracy, and future time orientation.